Fifty years ago, in August 1968, a citizens’ advisory committee proposed for Traverse City what would then be called the Human Relations Commission, later to be known the Human Rights Commission, a nine-member board that would go on to advocate for minority rights, women’s rig...
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All over Cadillac, developer Robb Munger has something going. On Mitchell Street, he’s purchased the Old City Hall building, which he plans to continue to rent out as office space. Down the street, he’s bought the dilapidated Better Bodies Health and Fitness property, which he...
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A decade ago, as the state reeled amid a national financial crisis, Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced a program to generate jobs and spur the economy: Michigan would offer the most generous film credits program in the country.

The program started off looking like a success, and it ...
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Northern Michigan’s most notorious cold case, the horrific 1968 murder of six members of the Robison family in Good Hart, has seemingly languished unsolved for five decades, a festering open wound amid an otherwise idyllic setting.

When Thomas Bailey took over as executive director of the Little Traverse Conservancy 34 years ago, he sat down and read a couple years’ worth of the nonprofit’s newsletters. While he found them to be informative, he also found that the writing lacked heart.

Next time you visit Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, you probably won’t notice that park officials and volunteers are scrambling behind the scenes to accommodate skyrocketing numbers of guests with a budget that’s flat or in decline.

The infection probably hopped over from a neighbor’s woods, in the form of a beetle carrying a fungus and attracted to the sap seeping from a trunk damaged last summer. It left one red oak tree dead amid a forest of red oaks.

Some seasoned beachcombers noticed an alarming amount of plastic trash washed up along Grand Traverse Bay this spring, fueling worry that’s been building over how so much plastic is getting into the Great Lakes and what the consequences might be.

At her practice in Traverse City, Dr. Julia Riddle treats pregnant women, many of whom are addicted to opiates. On her days off, she drives 60 miles to Gaylord, to work at one of the only centers in northern Michigan that distributes methadone to help patients beat their addictions to her...
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When an anchor strike punctured an underwater pipe in the Straits of Mackinac on April 1, releasing an estimated 600 gallons of a petroleum-based fluid into the Great Lakes from an electrical transmission line, the response was hampered by extreme weather.

The longtime NIMBY debate about creating a permanent homeless shelter on Traverse City’s Wellington Street — near the public library, a neighborhood, and main thoroughfare — came to a decisive close when Safe Harbor finally opened its doors in 2017. While it hasn't b...
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You’d have a hard time fitting on a campaign sign the reasons opponents of two Arcadia Township trustees want to see the officials removed from office. Likewise, those trustees’ supporters would have just as hard a time briefly making their case.